Licence: Public Domain Mark
Credit: Mental diseases / by Charles F. Folsom. Source: Wellcome Collection.
Provider: This material has been provided by the University of Massachusetts Medical School, Lamar Soutter Library, through the Medical Heritage Library. The original may be consulted at the Lamar Soutter Library at the University of Massachusetts Medical School.
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![is another question wliethei* the disease is sufficient in amount to impair the power of self-control and -will so as to determine irresponsibility. It is not the doctor's province to })unish for crime, hut to treat for disease, and he often forgets that fact. The various medical definitions of insanity in textbooks and on the witness-stand do not clearly enough state how far the medical and how far the forensic meaning of the word is implied. AVhat seem to be wide differences of opinion regarding responsibility for crime, as given in the courts, are often due to different Avays of stating the question, and nothing more. Boileau said that all men are insane, the only difference between them being the varying degrees of skill witii which they are able to conceal the crack ; and Montesquieu, that insane asylums are built in order that the outside world may believe itself sane. In 1832, Haslam, one of the first experts in mental disease in England at that time, testified in court that he had never seen a sane man in his whole life, adding, I presume the Deity is of sound mind, and He alone. It is impossible to give a satisfactory definition of insanity, to draw any hard and fast line on one side of which we should put all the sane, and on the other all the insane. It is not possible to divide insanity from sanity by a single criterion, such as the existence of delusions, inasmuch as many sane people have very curious delusions; for instance, Sir Wil- liam Blackstone's belief in witchcraft, as stated in his Commentaries on the Laics of England; Martin Luther's assertion that he saw the devil and threw an inkstand at him at a time when a belief in a personal devil Avas required by the canons of the Church of England; Napoleon's faith in his star; the common belief of the Erench generals that Joan of Arc's hallucinations were divine messages. Insane delusions have been defined as false beliefs, impossible from the nature of things or the circumstances of the case, according to general belief. One can only judge of each case and each person by the conditions attending them. A belief consistent Avith one person's whole life and character might indicate such a change in another as to be a mark of insanity. Hallucinations— psycho-sensorial disturbances characterized by sen- sations perceived when the exercise of the sense has not been determined by any external excitation —are characteristic of many conditions of disturbed health besides insanity; and the same is true of illusions— erroneous interpretations of sensations actually perceived. In both cases the existence of insanity is determined by the fact whether or not the erroneous impressions are corrected by the judgment. An important point is to consider most carefully every unnatural, strange, or unex- plained action, whether deliberate or from impulse, ]iai'ticularly in the large class of eccentric, ill-balanced, or weak-minded persons on the border-line between sanity and insanity. There are people who at one time seem to belong to the sane and at another to the insane class. Bail- larger states that the essential element of insanity is loss of free will. Ball of Paris describes an insane man as one who, in consequence of a profound disturbance of the intellectual faculties, has lost more or less completely his free will (liberte morale), and has ceased thereby to be resjionsible to society for his actions. Bucknill describes insanity, in his Sugden ])rize essay, as a condition of the mind in which a false action of conce})tion or judgment, a defee-](https://iiif.wellcomecollection.org/image/b2119760x_0015.jp2/full/800%2C/0/default.jpg)
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